These days I don’t often hit the trails. I live in an urban area with the near trail of significant length about 3 miles away. Back in the day I could hit this trail after work during the summer, but these days I’m not getting home early enough from work to get in some dirt miles before dark. This meant that while I was excited about getting a pair of Montrail Streaks to test out, I wouldn’t be getting them very dirty for awhile if I didn’t get them before my trip to the Mountains next week. The good news is that they were shipped via UPS yesterday, so I should have them in time to give them a beatdown in the Rockies. Sweet!

Also under the streaking category, I’ve now run seven days in a row. Not huge, but once again a step in the right direction. It seems that I’ve been at this stage in ramping up my training at least half a dozen times since April and have never been able to carry it through two weeks…. I look to change that now. My trip out West should be make or break. I will be woefully under prepared to pace Andy Jones-Wilkins (See also his blog) at the Grand Teton 100 and do the same goes for pulling Mike Wedemeyer along for the oh-not-so-fun final 25 miles of the Wasatch Front 100 the following weekend while I’ll be pounding out miles with my good runnning buddy Steve Burton in between the two races. This means I’ll be ramping up my weekly mileage from near nothing to huge in a couple weeks. While I know such a jump would be disasterous if carried over a few weeks, I think I handle such a jump for 10 days before settling into a more moderate training regime. Either those 10 days will be give me a huge mental (and delayed-onset endurance boost) or it will destroy me physically and mentally.

Fortunately, I’ve begun ramping up my mileage. My previous three weeks’ totals are approximately 5, 22, and 43 miles. For the seven day period ending yesterday I had 56 miles (with two track workouts). If I run as expected through the end of the week, I’ll hit somewhere near 70 miles for the week. Unlike most of my streak-based training ramp ups, I’m neither constantly exhausted nor do I feel completely lethargic during my runs. These are normally my biggest complaints. My muscles are constantly sore and while that’s annoying, I can push through it. For instance, yesterday my legs were once again heavy and I felt like I was plodding through 9 minute miles, but I managed 8 minute average pace on a hilly loop. This meant that most of the flats were 7:30 pace or faster, while I comfortably dropped the pace to 6:30 the final mile without even realizing it. Tonight, I hope to hit the track again 0 of late these are my only workouts as well as my long runs for the week.

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Thanks, Loomdog. I can't wait to be even semi-race-fit. I can understand why I feel worn out a bit most of the time while running, but am not pleased that I feel so slow or have NO endurance at all. Zippo. Ziltch. I know I can keep myself going on running 10 miles or less most days and getting in workouts on my own, but I've not been able to motivate myself to do any longs runs in many months. Hoping this breaks the seal, as it were, and the 20+ mile runs come rushing out this fall.